Month: March 2016

1994 Lynott Sound, Massachusetts. Young teenagers are found in a catatonic state. The cause seems to be a mysterious blue light of possible alien origin. The US army also has an involvement. The first story was a fairly good one to start off the book.

THE BEAST OF LITTLE HILL By Peter Clines.

1995 Little Hill, Missouri. Mulder decides to stop over after an assignment to the town of Little Hill the sight of an alleged UFO crash back in 1969. Two farmers have tourist trap exhibits of captured aliens that look very fake. A feud between the two farmers results in one of the exhibits actually coming to life an terrorizing the town. This was a good story that captured the characters and feel of the series.

OVERSIGHT by Aaron Rosenburg.

1994 Washington, D.C. Assistant director Walter Skinner is faced with the X-files being closed by an agency bean counter for being a waste of money. This accountant is later attacked at home by a mysterious attacker who can cause total darkness. Now Skinner is confronted with his own X-file to solve if he wants to save both the accountant’s life and the X-files. An interesting story featuring Skinner as the main character.

DUSK By Paul Crilley.

2015 Castle Bluff, New Hampshire. Young girls are disappearing by what is reported as a vampire character from a popular book series. The author of the series lives in the town and has a connection to his father who was a Nazi that was conducting experiments on a real vampire. This is a really good story that is obviously satirizing the Twilight Series and our modern pop culture in general.

LOVING THE ALIEN By Stefan Petrucha.

1997 Florence, South Carolina. Mulder has gone missing while investigating sightings of UFOs and an alien. The investigation leads to a disgruntled former CIA employee involved in mind control experiments that lost his job because of Mulder. This was a fascinating story that had a totally unexpected ending.

NON GRATUM ANUS RODENTUM By Brian Keene.

1994 Washington, D.C. Walter Skinner comes across a local news story that Mulder is investigating on the side. He notices in the picture an old buddy from the Vietnam War. This buddy was a tunnel rat in the war and Skinner saved him from what looked like a human rat. Now that rat type creature is back in the sewers of Washington. Another Skinner story and a very interesting one. One we get a glimpse of him as a young man back in Vietnam.

BACK IN EL PASO MY LIFE WILL BE WORTHLESS By Keith R.A. DeCandido.

1994 El Paso, Texas. Special agent Jack Colt has been investigating a serial killer. Each time he thinks he catches the killer a new suspect appears. Now Mulder and Scully are assigned to help and Mulder of course suspects a shapeshifter. This was a good story.

PARANORMAL QUEST By Ray Garton.

1997 Redding, California. A woman’s heart explodes from her chest. This woman was part of a family whose haunted house is being filmed for the popular reality series Paranormal Quest. The investigation leads to a nondescript female production assistant that has telekinetic powers. She was being used by the show’s producer and now her powers are out of control. A good story that satirized those paranormal reality series.

KING OF THE WATERY DEEP By Tim Deal.

2000 Saudi Arabia. A consulate worker disappears with a friend on a boating trip. While the local authorities suspect Somali pirates there are reports of a fish-man that is involved which is why Mulder and Scully are assigned the case. The investigation leads to an ancient Sumarian cult that worships the fish man and demands human sacrifice. An interesting story that takes place in an a new setting.

SEWERS by Gini Koch.

1990 Buena Vista, California. Reports of an alligator man that is kidnapping young boys. It leads to a similar X-file case from the 1950’s. A story before Mulder met Scully and was on the X-files.

CLAIR DE LUNE By David Benton and W.D. Gagliani.

1994 Ottawa, Canada. Mulder and Scully are escorting a mob witness back to the states to testify and must stop at an isolated motel in a snowstorm. The prisoners goes on about the danger from a werewolf which turns out to be true. The authors dedicate this story to the memory of Charles Grant. Sad to hear he pasted away. I know I was hard on him and but I do have fond memories of reading his books. I suppose its ironic that this is my least favorite story in the anthology.

IT’S ALL IN THE EYES By Heather Graham.

2009 Purgatory Pass, Massachusetts. Workers at a Halloween novelty shop are killed by life size dolls of the popular Caitlin Corpse. The investigation leads to aliens that crash landed and are looking for bodies to inhabit to survive. A creepy story that has the feel of an X-files episode.

THE HOUSE ON HICKORY HILL By Max Allan Collins.

1997 Banewich, Massachusetts. A popular author moves his family into a haunted house to write a book about it. Years ago a murder occurred there and now strange sightings and blood from the walls occur. The older daughter is kidnapped and clues point to the deceased murderer. This was a fascinating story with a twist ending that I never saw coming.

TIME AND TIDE By Gayle Linds and John C. Sheldon.

2000 Portland, Maine. On a small tourist island three teenagers go missing. A man calls Mulder that is monitoring a passage to another dimension. Now Mulder and Scully go to this other dimension to rescue the teens from the creature that lives there. This was an interesting story but it was out of character. Mulder is actually actively covering up this phenomenon which just doesn’t fit the character.

STATUES By Kevin J. Anderson.

1995 Death Valley, California. A prospector arrives at a hospital and quickly turns to stone. The trail leads to an artist who found a cave with water that turns organic tissue to stone. He has been turning people to stone and selling it as works of art. They saved the best for last. It was great to read another Kevin Anderson story.

Wow actually reading something fairly new. Anthologies are usually hit or miss with stories and I suppose that is the case with this book. The stories even the weakest ones were entertaining and it was great to read some new stories. There was aliens, UFOs, vampires, werewolves, ghosts, monsters, government cover ups, Cigarette Smoking Man, Krychek(remember him?), CIA mind control, Nazis, and general weirdness. Definitely for any fan of the series.

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A middle aged professor gets a skin transplant for a burn injury. Right after he goes completely nuts. Gaining superhuman strength and trashing his hospital room and crushing with his bare hands the head of a nurse. Such a strange event attracts the attention of Mulder who is always on the lookout for bizarre cases. The investigation leads to a John Doe who died in a car accident and had his skin accidentally harvested by mistake. The trail leads to a biotech firm. Unraveling the threads lead to the founder who started out treating napalm victims at a MASH unit in Thailand during the Vietnam war. A trip to the sleepy fishing village in Thailand results in a confrontation with a plot to create an army of mindless drones and a legendary Thai monster known as the “Skin Eater.”

The final book that was released during the run of the TV series is by a new author. Ben Mezrich has written an interesting story. I wonder if he has a medical background because he seems to be very knowledgeable about skin transplants. He did do considerable research about the subject and I learned that skin is the largest organ in the human body. It was refreshing to get a new author’s perspective on the series and he did a good job.

So the books for this series started out weak with Charles Grant but picked up steam with Kevin Anderson. Ben Mezrich ended the run on a positive note. Now since the series has come back so have new X-files books which we will look at next.

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A security guard at the Dymar research facility is found dead from a fatal disease. The Dymar was recently destroyed by arson from animal rights activists killing the head researcher and his assistant. The strange nature of the death qualifies it as a X-file and so Mulder and Scully go to Oregon to investigate. Their investigation soon points that animal rights activists were a cover for the shadow elements of the government who were really responsible for the fire. They wanted to suppress a new nanotechnology that could be the key to immortality. Now the lab assistant has survived and is infected with defective nanobots that are killing him and infecting anyone he comes into contact. The key to the cure is the researcher’s son who was cured of his terminal cancer and hiding out in a cabin in the Oregon wilderness.

The third and final Kevin Anderson book in the series is another solid story. He managed to cover a different X-files theme in each of his books. The first dealt with the paranormal. The second with aliens and this one with science gone horribly wrong. Sort of all the major themes from the TV series. Once again there was well researched information on nanotechnology showing he puts a lot of effort in this stories. His books were all unique and kept within the mythology that the series established. This books were a great improvement from the Charles Grant ones.

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An archeological expedition to the Yucatan has discovered a Mayan city deep in the jungle. The city of Xitaclan has been undisturbed for centuries. While exploring the team lead by Cassandra Rubicon disappears. The father of Cassandra convinces the FBI to investigate and naturally the FBI chooses Mulder and Scully. Mulder being the more imaginative one thinks that there is an extraterrestrial connection with ancient astronauts. Scully tends to believe in a more mundane explanation.

When they arrive in the lost city they run into a whole boatload of conflict. A shady guide who deals on the side in stolen artifacts. Superstitious natives that still believe in blood sacrifice. A police chief secretly in charge of a Yucatan secessionist terrorist movement. Sightings of mythical feathered serpents in the jungle. A strange alien spacecraft inside the pyramid. After finding the team murdered and dumped in a sacrificial pool all hell breaks loose when a covert U.S. military commando group shows up to blow up the city to stop a mysterious radio signal emanating from the pyramid. It ends in a battle between the commandos and the secessionist with a visit by the mysterious aliens.

The second book by Anderson is even better than the first. I think this is my favorite X-files book. The exotic location of the Yucatan was an excellent setting. Throw in aliens and government conspiracy and you have a classic X-files story. The history and culture of the Yucatan was well researched and informative. Lots of fast paced action and an interesting story that keeps the mystery going makes this a worthy book in the X-files series.

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Dr. Emil Gregory a renowned nuclear physicist is found dead in his laboratory at the Teller Nuclear Research facility in California. The nature of his death is very peculiar. He is found burned to a radioactive cinder almost like he was caught in a nuclear explosion. A nuclear explosion that was confined to a single room. Naturally anything weird and unexplained gets forwarded to the X-files. Mulder and Scully head out to California and immediately run into a wall of bureaucratic dead ends and national security. Soon after this other mysterious deaths occur under the same circumstances. A rancher whose family sold the land for the Trinity test, two Air Force officers in a nuclear silo, a Department of Energy bureaucrat. Soon the trail leads to a mysterious project code named Bright Anvil a new nuclear explosion with no fallout. It all comes to a climax on a small Atoll in the Pacific during a hurricane. An atoll where back in the fifties a whole tribe was accidentally wiped out in one of the atomic tests. Now the ghosts of that tribe strike out in vengeance.

Finally a X-files book that that gets it right. The Charles Grant books were commercial successes and lets face it back then anything with X-files on it would make money. But they were not critically well received so they went with Kevin Anderson. This is what an X-files book should be, government cover ups and mysterious clandestine tests, a mysterious paranormal threat. Anderson is a writer that really understands the characters and the TV series. He clearly did a lot of research and you learn a lot about the nuclear tests back in the fifties. They were finally on the right track in novelizing the series.